The Grapes Of Wrath

It's a town like any other
Sprouted up on claims
Half the stores are empty
Signs still bear the names
We all took a cut in pay
To keep from shutting down
The women made a co-op of
The one cafe in town
It doubles as a bookstore
And a kids' arcade
Some books are missing pages
We don't buy, we trade
On Friday nights the Cleary girls
Who live up on the bluff
Play concertina and guitar
Until we've had enough

Guess we're kind of loco
Those who have remained
Summer nights the northern lights
Still keep us entertained
The school is at Miss Jenkins' house
She teaches every year
Scratch my head and wonder
Just what keeps her here
The bosses of the smelter
Come and go each day
They prefer the city
Forty-seven miles away
They say the grass is greener
But where else would we go
In the end we settle for
The devil that we know

Cold here in the winter
Heating bills are high
If you let it, Christmas time
Can lead a man to cry
The women knit some sweaters
The men all build some toys
Christmas Eve the old cafe's
Alive with girls and boys
We drink and make a party
The sisters play so bad
Miss Jenkins sings in Spanish
Felice Navidad
Then tells us all a story
Enchants by candlelight
The women cry more than the kids
We hug and say good night

It's a town like any other
Sprouted up on claims
Empty stores like open sores
Signs still bear the names
Jill's Bakery, Mock's Shoe Repair
McMillan's pharmacy
The Steinbeck book I'm reading
Came from the library
Checked it out four years ago
Never paid the fine
No way to return it now
The Grapes of Wrath is mine
They say the grass is greener
Where else would we go
We take care of each other here
Let the green grass grow

DL

Billy Joe Shaver & Friend : The Real Deal 

Forevering

I heard this word - forevering - a long time ago from
a woman named Rose. She used it to describe a way of
dreaming ahead. She'd go forevering. I saw the word
again somewhere a few weeks ago. I'd forgotten it, and
it had dreamed ahead all these years waiting for me to
remember. This one is for the father whose son or
daughter has gone away and he is lonely in his body,
forevering...

An old man clears his throat out on the porch and starts to sing
The present's hard to live with so he goes forevering
There's a shiver in his body that no fire could ever warm
And a photograph pinned on the wall, a boy in uniform

There's a scarecrow on the highway, beat-up guitar in a sack
There's a tumbleweed keeps rollin' down a trainless railway track
There's a menace in the midnight where it isn't safe to go
And a heart that is afraid to tell the pain it's come to know

There's a girl up in Seattle, tryin' to form a metal band
A kid named Late who caught a freight back home to Beulah Land
There's a woman says she's leavin' and a man begs her to stay
There's an empty mailbox waiting on a Dear John letter day

There's a fallen priest in Texas whose faith once made him rich
He saw too many rainbows drown their colors in the ditch
There's a woman in Dakota lost her past near Wounded Knee
She walks on blind still tryin' to bind the hoop of history

There's a boy out in Salinas who has learned to swallow gin
He’s crazy like a circus pitched its tents beneath his skin
There's a hooker down in Memphis with blood blisters on her feet
Still lookin' for a porch light at the dark end of the street

There's a farmer in Nebraska, red dust across his face
And all he grows pays what he owes for workin’ this old place
There's a baker wakes in Couer D'Alene to make our daily bread
One day the sun will rise and he won't get out of his bed

The old man clears his throat out on the porch and tries to sing
Today is hard to live with so he goes forevering
He hasn't heard a word now, it's been near twenty days
He's lonesome in his body and singing's how he prays

DL